-broken bridges, dead end streets and building fences added to the environment.
-lots of new items added to the world, including rotten/fresh food items, ripped/clean clothing items. The stats of each item is dependent on its quality. A rotten apple, for example, will not replenish as much HP as a fresh one. The game now features over 650 unique items to find and purchase.
-eating/drinking functionality has been added to the inventory panel, and animations corresponding to each action are triggered when you feed your character
-stats are displayed in numeric form in the inventory window
-an HP bar pops up momentarily for anything (props or zombies) damaged in the world, so you can see how many hit points it has left
-the main character now gets bloody when injured.

The zombie AI system was completely re-hauled. Instead of having perfect knowledge of the player's whereabouts, zombie intelligence is now sight/sound based. Zombies won't attack targets unless they can see them, and will wander towards nearby sounds. This means you can do things like distract zombies with sound while heading in an opposite direction, or sneak up on zombies from behind. Zombies will also try to break down the doors of a building if they feel there is a viable target inside.

Other improvements to the game involve preventing weapons from being able to hit zombies/props through walls, and adding an in-icon ammo counter for active items.

Here are some .gifs showcasing some of the above changes to the game. The first two animated .gifs show zombies chasing the player and breaking down the doors of the building the player is inside. The third .gif shows some of the improved swarming (sped up to 200%), and the fourth .gif shows the active item ammo counters (as well as what happens to the icon when the player runs out of ammo).

Fantastic! This is really looking fantastic... but that's now sounding like me being a broken record.

One thing I haven't determined: is this an endless kind of game? Is there a beginning, middle, and end? What is the motivation for the player, or perhaps the primary gameplay motivation? Seems like there is so much to do and collect, so perhaps it's best to leave this a mystery until the game is released

(Jan 24, 2012 11:10 AM)funkboy Wrote: Fantastic! This is really looking fantastic... but that's now sounding like me being a broken record.

One thing I haven't determined: is this an endless kind of game? Is there a beginning, middle, and end? What is the motivation for the player, or perhaps the primary gameplay motivation? Seems like there is so much to do and collect, so perhaps it's best to leave this a mystery until the game is released

This is something that I'm still debating.

There will be NPCs, there will be quests, there is going to be an overarching "story", but not necessarily a beginning/middle/end. More of an ongoing saga that you can choose to participate in or ignore.

Are you adding any fun mechanics to the food system, or is it mostly a "don't let it hit 0" type of element? There's a lot of opportunity to add *fun* to this, to reward the player for keeping it high, instead of a punishment for letting it hit low. Such as, having above "50" gives bonus to speed and damage, whereas anything below 20-50 is normal, and perhaps below 20 you start to see a penalty.

I'm only suggesting, if you're adding this concept as a feature to enhance the fun of your game, make sure it's fun!